The new technique of vacuum ultraviolet circular dichroism (VUCD) will be used in conformational studies of (a) polysaccharides, (b) beta-forming peptides, and (c) globular proteins. Conventional circular dichroism methods are precluded in the case of polysaccharides because of the usual absence of electronic transitions above 190 nm. Preliminary experiments indicate that VUCD is sensitive to polysaccharide conformation, and we propose a systematic characterization of polysaccharide conformation by VUCD. Preliminary studies show variaton in the VUCD of beta-forming oligopetides, with some indication that parallel and anti-parallel sheets are distinguishable by VUCD. We propose to establish the cause of variation in beta peptide VUCD. VUCD has been used in a series of spectroscopic studies of ordered polypeptides; and the proposed research includes a characterization of globular protein VUCD.